This “cocked hat” (aka “three cornered”, tricorn, tricorne, or colonial hat) is a fun project that you can make right now, requiring about a half hour of your time and a few supplies readily at your fingertips (scissors, glue, and paper). However, if you’d prefer a more durable chapeau — say, for Halloween, a school play, or clearly more memorable beach photos — then with a five-dollar bill and but a single trip to a hobby or fabric store you’ll have your perfect, custom lid.

Here’s how I found myself making my first hat (feel free to skip ahead to the instructions):

Part of the fun of building smaller websites for friends is the opportunities they afford to be immersed in new, often unconventional, worlds, and in the case of my pal Ben Tripp’s site, for his Young Adult novel “The Accidental Highwayman”, one of those other worlds would be 18th century England, of which I knew nothing. So it was that I came to find myself at a pub getting schooled on cocked hats by Ben (he’s adamant that I use the historically accurate, quite archaic, name “cocked hat”, versus their common, modern name: “tricorn”)

One thing led to another (read: “pint”) and soon I was declaiming my need for my own cocked hat. Turns out this was easily accomplished, so much so that I thought I’d document it and share my DIY patterns with y’all. So let’s build…

Instructions

First off, a big thank you to SPWA for allowing me to include his baseball cap design for use as our cocked hat’s crown (my early attempts were truly feeble, ranging from lumpy beret to stunted witch’s peak, so again, thanks, SPWA!).

Secondly, I’ve made a few of these hats now (don’t laugh, you might, too) using various materials and I can honestly attest that paper is your easiest and fastest choice. In fact, a couple brown grocery store bags, carefully cut apart and spread flat, work terrifically. That said, however, for these instructions I’ll be walking you through making a felt hat. I’ll note any special paper tips as asides.

Time

Paper hats: ~30 minutes

Felt hats: ~ 1 1/2 hours

Project Steps:

Hat assembly requires five steps (completely read all of the instructions before you begin):

print & trace

the crown, the most difficult step in which you’ll essentially be making a baseball cap’s dome;

Tip: Protect That Worktable! You’ll be using glue, a substance known to love hiding where it ought not be until its dried, at which point your mom/dad/girlfriend/boyfriend/roommate shall invariably discover it and scream how you’ve ruined the table. So take a few minutes to smooth out some newspaper over the entire work surface. Keep a damp paper towel near at hand to clean minor drips.

Tip: Research! There is tremendous variation in how these hats looked and were worn based on class and need, so you’ll also want to Google image search “cocked hat” (try “tricorn”, too) to decide which colors, trim, and shaping options suit your fancy, but don’t be limited by what you see, they sure weren’t.

Step One: Print & Trace

In this step you’ll download and print a template, and then trace it onto your hat material.

I’ve prepared four template sizes (adult men’s medium, adult women’s, child, and toddler), if you need a more exact, fitted version and know how to adjust your printer’s output based on percentage then begin with the adult template and scale accordingly. It makes an 7.6″ diameter round head opening (approximately 23″ circumference) with an ~18″ brim (before folding)

Tip: Fewer Seams Are Better! these patterns have been designed so that they’ll fit onto US letter (8.5 x 11″) paper, but this doesn’t mean that you need to cut them out this way. In fact, you want as few seams as possible. So if your fabric or paper are big enough make the hat brim by tracing the pattern four times to make a single, complete circle like this (below), do so!

Likewise, if you’re able to make it fit, the ideal hat crown would be a single piece that looks like this:

The gray areas in the above image are your folding tabs: note that the triangular tip of each panel will be folded! These all get smushed under the hexagonal “nut” (there’s only one “nut”, on the far right panel).

Step Two: The Crown

In this step you’ll cut-out the crown’s “gores’, pin them into a round cap, check the fit, and finally glue your crown.

I’ll not lie: this is where I made all of my mistakes. You’re forming a rounded half-dome from a flat sheet — this requires careful folding, thus dry-fitting first is a good idea committing to the glue. Technically speaking you’re forming a octagonal dome, by folding in the 8 “gores” — triangular panels. When carefully folded they form a surprisingly smooth dome.

Having already traced the pattern onto your material it’s now time to carefully cut along the solid lines — not the dotted lines, those are your fold guides.

Tip: Cut Between Tabs: Be sure to cut all the way down each of your crown’s gores: that bottommost tab needs to be cut apart from its adjoining panel’s (gore’s) edge.

Pin your crown together before you apply a single drop of glue!

Tip: Overlap To Avoid A Very Pointy Peak! The only pro-tip I can offer (and this only because I made a complete muddle of it the first time — see photo later in this post) is that forming the hat’s crown requires patient bending and overlapping of the side panels, with each panel’s tip overlapping that of its neighbors ever so slightly. The top two folds are the most important, they’ll decide whether it looks round like an acorn cap or spiky-pyramid-ish, like an acorn’s bottom (again, see photo documenting my flub).

Tip: Use A Form: If you have a cap or ball that’s the right size try laying your pieces over it.

Tip: Try It On! Before committing to the shape and size go ahead and try it on, make required adjustments.

Once you’re satisfied with your pinned crown’s shape go back around it removing each pin, gluing both the tab’s surface and the back of the panel, pressing them firmly together, and loosely re-pinning before proceeding to the next pin.

Now that you’ve gone completely around the crown you should set it aside until the glue begins to set. Depending upon your glue and the weather this will require about a half hour.

Remove the pins before they become a permanent adornment to your hat.

Step Three: The Brim

Now you’ll cut out the brim, glue (if needed), and attach any trim.

Note: Inner Head Opening Size: if you made any size adjustments to your crown you’ll need to adjust the size of the brim’s inner head opening (the outer size requires no changes).

If you were able to cut the brim from a single piece of material without any seams — congratulations – less gluing for you!

If you do need to glue your brim, first dry fit it, tape or pin it, check that it’s round, adjust, and once it’s completely true and round, glue each section and set aside to dry.

Tip: Apply Trim to Brim. (optional) If you’re planning on adding a bit of gold or silver trim around your hat’s brim now would be a good time to do this, before attaching the crown. Pin the trim, then glue and replace the pins. Place a few magazines for weight on top while it dries.

Tip: Add More Tabs. If your crown’s base is very round, and with felt it should be, then you can cut extra tabs on the brim’s inner tabs (see picture below). Doubling our brim’s tab count from 8 to 16 will allow us to follow a much smoother, natural curve.

Step Four: Assembly

In this step you attach the completed crown to the brim, first with pins (following a star pattern), then gluing.

Now that the crown and brim glue joints are dry you’ll just place the crown over the center of the brim and, yup, carefully pin the brim’s tabs inside the crown. The problem to watch for is “bunching up” or wrinkles where you’ve pulled or stretched the fabric.

(in the above pic you’ll notice that I have a shape problem — it looks like a melting Hershey’s Kiss — which could have been avoided had I pinned it first. I didn’t and paid the price; I had to yank apart all of the panels, from the second fold to the tip, then pin, and re-glue. Lesson learned! Fixed crown drying below)

Note: Trim Faces Down! Make sure the gold trim is face down. Why? Remember the final cocked hat’s brim is rolled up; it’s the brims’ bottom that will be most visible — so you want that trim on the bottom.

(OK, confession: again I did this upside down the first time, but fortunately this time I’d only pinned it — no glue — and noticed my gaff in time to flip it upside down and repin)

Tip: Alternate Panels While Pinning. This is actually my dad’s tip for how to tighten a wheel’s lug nuts when replacing a car tire, but it applies here, too. Instead of pinning one panel, followed by its neighbor, and so forth, progressing panel-by-panel around the cap you will instead use a star pattern, jumping across the cap each time. So, pin your fist panel, check alignment and fix any puckering problems, then jump directly across to the opposite side and pin that (see diagram), and so forth, until all 8 panels have been pinned to the brim and the brim lies smooth and flat — no wrinkles — on your work table.

With the crown pinned to the brim let’s now go around, star-pattern-wise, gluing our flaps.

Tip: Check Inside. I glued and pinned from the outside — watching for puckers. Once that’s done, I flipped the hat over and made sure all those tabs were securely glued and pinned from the inside as well.

Set aside (flat surface, crown side up) and allow to dry.

Step Five: Shaping

Now the fun part: shaping, or “blocking”, your hat — fold three brim sides up and safety pin to the crown.

Start by safety pinning a point on the brim to about 3/4 of the way up the cap’s crown (pin should be about 1 to 1 1/2″ from the brim’s edge). Repeat twice more, moving 1/3 of the way around each time. You’ll probably experiment with several folds, and mirror checks, before finding one you like!

Refer to the cocked hats you saw online — do you want a sharp crease or rounded, high or low? Play with it. Some look like perfect equilateral triangles from the top (see also: cheese head), whereas others are isosceles triangles. Ben’s in this latter camp (the back fold is shorter than the sides). He’s also added a bit of a pinch to it. Below is top view showing how he’s blocked his cocked hat (as he describes it, “a mighty uncomfortable bicycle seat” below)

While Ben and I were whipping up his book’s website, we, as is our want, were frequently sidetracked by the endless possibilities for fun DIY tie-ons (the origins of my zombie half mask are rooted in similar bull sessions, back when he was writing his Rise Again zombie novels). Ben quickly knocked out this charming bookplate and I got cracking on how to make this cube-headed fella bobble (turns out that a piece of thread resting on a simple notched yoke performs the trick ably). You should also take a peek at Ben’s DIY paper mache troll costume, visible for about 3 seconds in one of his author videos.

Well, summer has arrived and my pal Terry turns 70 in just a few weeks. The high points of my summers are the cool evenings spent with Terry and his wife, Sandy, picnicking on the Huntington Library grounds drinking beer, eating BBQ, and, yes, enjoying ice cream (Fosselman’s usually) and outings to Terry’s back porch where a dozen or so great folks convene to sing and play ukulele.

In honor of his bday I thought I’d try combining these — behold, the chocolate-nut ukulele ice cream treat!

Terry, sorry that I won’t actually be making you these, however, please accept this doodled one instead (a “ukesicle”?) — and thanks so much to you and Sandy for all the fun!

For those wanting just the leprechaun on transparent background here ya go:

This lil’ uker began as a 1 1/2″ pencil sketch which I then snapped with iPad camera (for something this rough a scanner and computer are definitely overkill).

Next: fire up (old version) of Brushes for iPad and import my thumbnail leprechaun sketch, setting the mode to “multiply” so I can “see through” the sketch to do my work (a bit like cartoonists onion skinning). Then it’s just a matter of patiently adding layers, doing detail work, then flattening the layers (Brushes only allows 5 layers — which is good because I tend to go nuts with my Photoshop layers).

All told this probably took 4+ hours to complete, but it was a pleasant day spent out on the tiny balcony.

Whiled away the hours driving back to LA from Sonoma alternating between plunking the ukulele and doodling on the iPad. This odd fellar’s the result.

Here’s wishing all y’all — single, coupled, or “not sure”/”in transition” — a very happy Valentine’s Day, and remember, “no one with a musical heart is ever alone” (and “no one traveling with a ukulele player ever does so in silence”)

Note: The 5 (our lengthy freeway connecting San Diego to Seattle, always referred to as “the five”) experience, between San Jose and LA, is a stunningly uneventful stretch of freeway (though it falls far, far short of challenging the ultimate stretch of dull US freeway, that being I-70 between KC and Denver). Once you’ve made your obligatory pilgrimage to the windmill topped Pea Soup Andersen’s Restaurant (Santa Nella), ain’t much to do.

Funny how many “I knows it when I sees its” there are out there and for me, apparently, the tyrannosaurus rex would need to be included on this list. After quite a few aborted attempts here’s my updated UkeGeeks (jolly, socially-awkward ukulele playing dinosaur) mascot, affectionately known as “Scriptasaurus”, which replaces the original, a placemat doodle that never got much love.

Never fails to amaze me, the circuitous route I always follow to well known destinations (see rejects & live-sketching video below — all roads had Godzilla and Florida ‘Gators mascot shaped potholes, and I squarely hit each one). Sigh.

The new fella is both more stylized and simplified, so he (hopefully) reads well at different sizes. I’m particularly happy with his chalkboard incarnation (below).

Here’s how he developed (animated playback from Brushes 1.0 on iPad). The “key” seemed to be moving maw’s mass around: making snout “top heavy” differentiates my dino from the crocodile’s rather symmetric upper and lower weight distribution.

Also, getting those eye orbits more into the skull and less “peaking just above the waterline”.

‘Tis the season! Idled away a pleasant afternoon sipping Jones coffee(s!!!!) and iPad-doodling Halloween songbook covers. First up is just this simple Jack-o’-lantern ghostie fan strumming her ukulele (sidebar: shortly after moving to the States a friend’s son excitedly carved his first pumpkin, only to tearfully learn that we don’t actually wear them like this).

Next we have a quite friendly vampire summoning his bat-ukulele pal (yeah, revisiting last year’s vampire bat uke illustration). Big thanks, of course, to Ludlow for suggesting the moon and wing tips (even the name’s fitting — but of course a vampire would wear ’em).

Anticipating a really great Halloween Eve uke night (so far our song list includes “People Are Strange”, the Addams Family Theme, and The Time Warp) — we’re gonna pickup a Golden Road growler of “Point the Way” IPA to fill one of these DIY pumpkin beer kegs. Awesome!

Doodling whilst watching the Olympics. Apparently had The Muppet Movie lodged somewhere in my noggin — perhaps it’s Ludlow’s bounce-running like a Muppet, throwing his head back and yelling “yaaaaaaaaay” in a Kermit-y voice every time anyone does well (yes, your life would be much richer if you could see it, and yes, it’s prime Tumblr animated gif fodder, but, no, I’m resisting such a posting for the moment). Sketched with Brushes for iPad.

“Ukulele Rangers” was our nickname for the folks we encountered in Yosemite who’d brought their ukuleles (or guitars or even one fella with an udu) along on their hikes. I’d done this quick sketch at the time, but in the two months since our trip I’ve kept returning to this idea — a bit obsessively, actually — of these chance meetings and impromptu jam sessions among companionable folks, making music while enjoying the outdoors.

So here’s my invitation (or friendly challenge) for all y’all to join the Ukulele Rangers. It’s quite easy — just grab your ukulele along with that trail mix, bug repllant, and s’mores supplies as you head out the door to your next picnic, backyard croquet match, or camping trip.

I really tried to make a good 2-color logo, I really did, but in the end I was only able to get down to three colors (here it is on a button):

(BTW, you can customize any of these products on Zazzle.)

Since Zazzle allows printing “full wrap” (all the way around a mug — see previews below) I combined the original singing bear mascot and the above logo, placing them into a Warner Bros. animation background inspired forest. It’s titled “Do Bears Sing In The Woods?”. I’m ordering both the 15oz Coffee Mug and 11oz Coffee Mug, and will report back on my impressions.

I’m still setting up the t-shirt designs, but do have this preliminary sketch (below). The final shirts will probably have the simplified 3-color logo on the front pocket area and the full design on the back.

In the car, driving up to Yosemite National Park, I started playing with Brushes, a nifty iPad sketching app (OK, Ludlow drove, I fiddled with the radio, strummed the uke, and made annoying and quite rude noises at passing cows). Anyhow, my official review: super happy camper am I!

Here’s my first effort — a mascot for the “Yosemite Ukulele Rangers” (yeah, I was a bit unsure what a real park ranger’s hat looked like — fortunately the ranger at the park’s gate happily modeled hers for me).

I’ll do a bit more refining — should be a black bear, not a cinnamon, for example, but I’m too stoked about this app to not post this rough sketch.

Brushes (a trifling $7.99 on iTunes) is quite easy to use (intuitive, Photoshop-esque tools) and its ability to replay/export the “actions” (export a movie of the entire drawing process, stroke by stroke, as above) is an unexpected, but much appreciated feature. I’m already finding that I’m sometimes drawing for how the animation will look as much as the final resulting illustration — perhaps not a good thing.

I’ll drop this into Adobe Illustrator for the final illustration, of course, but this is a very fast way for me to work play.

I’m just now browsing the Brushes manual — some features I’d missed in my initial ad hoc playing (such as “hold-for-color-picking”) look terrific.

While this isn’t completely replacing those mechanical pencils, kneaded erasers, and pocket sketchbooks I’ve been toting around for past six years, it comes mighty close (I’ll continue pocketing Rodrigo’s now tattered 2 x 3 inch book whenever I go hiking, for example). Next week’s Drawing Club might be a worthy test — I’ve seen others there using Brushes with great success (not that the tool makes the artist).